My big plan was to finish up some loose ends so that I could truly enjoy my first winter holiday season in town, not working retail. Daughter was coming home, holiday cards were mailed away...even the weather was nice.

Did your December deviate from the plan, too? There have been unexpected rituals, several funerals, more than one friend or circle mate whose life took a turn for the...challenging.

We looked at the chart of the Winter Solstice, 2012 from a mundane (world affairs) standpoint a couple of weeks ago, and this post will interpret the same chart, but from the viewpoint of the magician or spiritual seeker who is looking for clues about how to utilize the energy of this quarter to grow and transform. The Capricorn Ingress chart (another name for the chart of the Winter Solstice) can be consulted for personal insight as well as mundane, and set against one’s birth chart in the same way I set it against the chart of the USA. (If you have not read my first post on this chart, you might want to do that now, because it gives insights into and explanations of the chart’s structure that I will not repeat here.)

As we move through the difficult challenges of this transformative time, it helps to look closely at the current astrology so we can learn how to ride these waves of change into an evolutionary future, instead of a bleak, painful, or destructive one. In the same way that a farmer must consult the weather before choosing what work to do during any given day, week or month, it is useful for magicians to consult the astrological weather to determine what magical work will be most likely to meet with favorable results. More importantly, the cycles of the planets provide spiritual lessons that are uniquely suited to the time, and, if we look at them against the backdrop of our own birth charts, we will find those lessons personalized for us.

You might want to cast the chart for the moment of the solstice (12/21/12 @ 11:12 a.m. GMT — adjust for your time zone) in your location, then put that chart in a bi-wheel with your natal chart, and look in which houses of your birth chart the planets and the angles of the solstice chart fall, as well as any natal planets that are closely aspected from the solstice chart. This will tell you what issues and areas of your life will be activated. (If that last part just went right over your head, don’t worry. I will bold my conclusions, so those who don’t want the astrological techniques can skip through.)

I know little about the Mayan Calendar — just that this Winter Solstice is supposed to mark the end of a major cycle in that calendar. I know a little more — but not much — about the alignment of the Sun with galactic equator and the Dark Rift of the Milky Way, also purportedly on this date, though it is my understanding that the astronomy of this alignment is difficult to measure with any precision within years, much less days. While I do not doubt that we are at a time of profound, historic shift and change for the human race, I personally do not think that the turning of an age can be accurately said to happen on one particular day, even as a pivot point. A mountain cannot pivot on the head of a pin.

So if you were looking for end of the world, or even end of the age predictions, you won’t find them here. I’ll be interpreting the Capricorn Ingress Chart, the chart for the moment of the Winter Solstice, in the same way I interpreted the Libra Ingress Chart — as a look ahead at the next three months using standard Western astrology, and staying within the bounds of our solar system. As usual, I have cast this chart for Washington, DC, which reflects the meaning of the chart for the entire USA.